President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The Trump administration is unlawfully trying to slash some $1 billion in federal funding for school-based mental health services in violation of a court order, a federal lawsuit filed this week alleges.
Last summer, the Department of Education (DOE) moved to discontinue congressionally authorized grants for K-12 mental health programs funded in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.
In turn, 16 states, led by Washington, sued, saying that “many schools in Plaintiff states will no longer be able to reliably provide mental health services to the kids that need them most.”
In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson, a Joe Biden appointee, issued an injunction barring the DOE from “implementing or enforcing by any means the Directive procedure.”
Now, the government is moving to cut the funds again based on a different formal mechanism, according to the latest lawsuit filed by most of the states that were part of the original litigation.
“The Department of Education persists in its illegal plan to deny critical mental health funding to public school students based on these new priorities even though a permanent injunction has been issued by this Court to stop it, and even though the underlying rationale upon which its plan is premised has been held unlawful,” the 56-page complaint filed Friday reads.
The funds in question support the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP), which aims to address a shortage of mental health professionals in high-need public schools.
The second tranche of targeted funds is for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH), which provides funding to help schools hire, train, and retain school-based mental health staff.
Each program was designed as a five-year initiative to place 14,000 new mental health professionals in schools – particularly schools in low-income and rural areas, the plaintiffs note.
Last year, the Trump administration said it intended to repurpose the MHSP and SBMH funds “based on new priorities.”
This time, the government says “some or all” of the protected grants are subject to termination. Last month, the DOE asked Evanson for clarification, arguing it has a “separate authority to terminate.”
“Defendants say they can do this because the [earlier] injunction enjoined ‘discontinuances,’ and now, the Department plans to ‘terminate’ the grants at issue,” the lawsuit explains. “But though the precise mechanism by which the Department plans to end the protected grants may have changed, its illegality has not.”
In other words, the government is now attempting a plan “to circumvent the permanent injunction by targeting the grants” directly under two separate directives rather than via piecemeal funding determinations, according to the litigation.
Now, the plaintiffs say they are not going to wait.
“Although Plaintiff States maintain that the [earlier] injunction prohibits Defendants from terminating grants based on the same unpublished priorities and oppose Defendants’ pending clarification motion, Plaintiff States file this lawsuit protectively, in the event the Court in Washington determines Defendants are not enjoined from terminating the Protected Grants under [the] permanent injunction,” the lawsuit goes on.
The states go on to note that the Trump administration committed roughly six months’ worth of funding for the programs after their loss in court, but has since “reversed course” and plans to cut the program grants beginning as soon as July 31.
“The first time this administration tried to take mental health services away from children, we beat them in court,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a press release announcing the litigation.
“Now they are trying to carry out the same illegal scheme and abandon students who need support,” James went on. “We already stopped them once, and we are prepared to do it again. My office will keep fighting to protect our children’s mental health and ensure schools have the resources to hire counselors, social workers, and psychologists in communities that need them most.”
